Sunday, May 11, 2008

I'm getting ready for another long trip and have been going nuts ripping video for my iPhone. I was using HandBrake for a while, but I find that VisualHub (Mac only) is much nicer. It has a lot of little extras, like "Add to iTunes" and "Stitch Together Video" that make it worth the registration fee. Note that VisualHub doesn't work with copy protected DVDs so you might need something like HandBrake if you're dealing with protected DVDs. If you don't feel like spending $23 on VisualHub, try it's free cousin, iSquint. VisualHub and iSquint are both sassy software. The dialog boxes and user documentation are a hoot.

VisualHub also seems to work much faster than HandBrake.

One trick I've learned, is to have VisualHub copy the video to an external USB drive so my internal hard drive doesn't get filled up. You need to make sure you don'thave the Copy to iTunes Music Folder when adding to library option selected. Otherwise iTunes will create another copy of the huge video files to your internal hard dive. It's no fun when your startup drive is full.